April
22, another day on the calendar
By
Will Collette
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| Earth Day 1970 |
I
have a sentimental attachment to Earth Day. Cathy and I first met when we were
both volunteers at the long-gone
Ecology Action for Rhode Island. Ecology Action was founded in the first
blush of the new wave of environmentalism that led to the celebration of the first Earth Day in
1970.
Forty-four years ago, wow, has it really been that long?
Forty-four years ago, wow, has it really been that long?
In
1970, Earth Day was a big deal and was marked with mass rallies across North
America that raised issues large and small, global and local, and had a pretty
sharp message about corporate polluters.
Lots of national groups, regional
coalitions and local grassroots organizations grew out of that event and
carried enough momentum to push Congress to enact landmark legislation such as
the Clean
Air Act and Clean
Water Act.
Over
time, the Earth Day event was inevitably co-opted and used by corporate
polluters to “greenwash” their public image while continue to rape the planet.
Earth Day became a nice, warm-and-fuzzy day where well-intentioned people could
say they were environmentalists by spending a few hours picking up trash.
It’s
only a matter of time before Earth Day starts to resemble other holidays where
you are encouraged to send greeting cards (on 100% post-consumer recycled
paper, of course) and are deluged with car dealer holiday sale TV ads (only these will push
hybrids and all-electrics).
Nonetheless, I
see Earth Day 1970 as the birthday of the modern environmental movement that,
among other things, did indeed launch many grassroots groups who fought local
environmental problems such as toxic waste dumps, giant garbage facilities,
chemical plants, coal mines, factory farming and fossil-fuel and nuclear power
plants. I spent 20 years in Washington working with groups like that.
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| From LIFE Magazine in 1970 |
Over
time, the unity of Earth Day devolved and the environmental movement split into pretty distinct factions. I knew the
grassroots wing best since I was immersed in working to organize them 24/7 from
1980 to 2000.
Though the grassroots wing tended to be pretty militant and
anti-corporate, we were flanked on the left by Greenpeace, Earth First and related
groups who saw not only corporations, but human beings in general as threats to
the environment. Within in that radical wing were activists who burned down
buildings under construction and who drove spikes into trees so that chainsaws
would explode and injure lumber workers. There were even some who publicly wished a plague would descend to decimate, if not wipe out, humankind.
Oddly,
these anti-human being activists shared a lot in common with some of the most
conservative groups within the broad environmentalist array, the conservationists.
Most typical of this end of the spectrum is the Nature
Conservancy. They too see people as a major problem, though not all people.
For example, they’re fine with corporate polluters who provide the Conservancy
with very generous funding to buy up swaths of land to be set aside and keep away
from human use. The National Wildlife Federation
and Audubon Society have similar
profiles.
Then,
spanning a wide spread at the center of the spectrum are the more technocratic
environmental organizations. Some examples are the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Environmental Action and
others, plus regional and local versions such as the Conservation Law Foundation.
These
organizations do meticulous research and issue lots of studies and reports.
They lobby for legislation and fight in the bureaucratic trenches to make sure
environmental regulations are well written. They file lots of major lawsuits.
Some
major groups within the environmental movement are, to my point of view,
hybrids that try to combine different elements. There are a couple of stand-out
groups that are conservation-based, but who have embraced aspects of grassroots
environmentalism and have done active outreach to grassroots groups. Prime
examples are the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.
A couple of technocratic
environmental groups are also stand-outs for their efforts to connect with
grassroots groups – Clean Water
Action and the US Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) which was found by Ralph Nader.
But
the days when these diverse groups with radically divergent points of view
would be willing to stand united, if only for a day, are long gone. In the
day-to-day reality, I see these groups drifting further apart.
Just to be
clear, even though I have my own personal politics on the environment, just
about every group I’ve named above has done good things and, to varying
degrees, I’ve done work with all of them. No one group can cover every issue or
engage every constituency, so there is a value to having groups that span the
political spectrum, so long as that spectrum is actually covered.
Charlestown is a microcosm of the national politics on the environment. In the official Charlestown led by the Charlestown
Citizens Alliance (CCA Party), “environmentalism” is defined by a distinctly
anti-human being philosophy closely resembling the radical conservationists in
Earth First (though without the arson or sabotage, at least for now).
Under
the leadership of Planning
Commissar Ruth Platner, official Charlestown policy places open
space acquisition above any other land use, even though more than half of
Charlestown’s land is open space.
On top of that, Platner
and Council
Boss Tom Gentz have tried to engineer giveaways
of taxpayer money through transfer of land and cash to their favorite
conservation group, the Charlestown
Land Trust.
Under
Platner, and now with her husband Cliff Vanover ensconced on the Zoning Board
of Review, no
construction is good construction.
Platner
espouses a policy of discouraging
families with children to move to or live in Charlestown. I am not making
this up. She even published a bogus mathematical formula that allegedly shows
how families with school-age children are parasites plaguing Charlestown
taxpayers. Click
here to see for yourself.
Platner
does not care about the problems connected to Charlestown’s active or inactive
quarries. She
washed her hands of efforts to regulate these largely unregulated
businesses while eagerly seeking to control
the building design, lighting, signage, parking
lots and shrubbery
of, for example, Arrowhead
Dental or the Cross
Mills Fire station and other small businesses around town.
Platner
and the Town Council do not care about Charlestown’s
terribly low recycling rate. We are last in the state for tonnage per
capita, but for some reason, that doesn’t register with her, the Council or the
CCA Party.
Platner
and her Town Council colleagues don’t care about the lingering hazards of the
old hazardous waste dumps scattered across the Charlestown landscape. Many of
them are now “open space” because they have been “remediated” by having tons of
clay put on top of them as “caps,” while toxic chemicals continue to leach out
of the bottom of those sites and into our ground water.
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| Banned in Charlestown |
Platner
and her CCA Party colleagues see green
energy as a threat, not a moral imperative to do our share to address
climate change. Accordingly, Charlestown has effectively banned
all forms of wind-generated energy, including small turbines that could provide
individual homes with clean energy.
She thought former Town Administrator Bill
DiLibero committed a terrible crime by exploring whether one of our local
“capped” toxic waste sites could be re-purposed
as a biofuel facility.
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| Under attack by the CCA Party |
Platner
and her husband Cliff tried to impede
the building of adequate toilet facilities at the two town beaches,
preferring instead that people either not come to the beach or that they should
“hold it” until they hit a public restroom somewhere out of town.
The
CCA Party has fought against expanded aquaculture in our salt ponds, even
though aquaculture not only creates jobs but actually helps to clean the
coastal ponds, because some CCA members think the sight of people working in
the ponds spoils their view.
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| Public transportation, CCA style |
And
not even a Peep® from Platner or the CCA Party about the lack
of access to public transportation for Charlestown residents to get to
work, school or training.
Last
year, CCA Party Town Council Boss Tom Gentz decided the best way for Charlestown to celebrate Earth Day was to recruit local volunteers to clean up storm debris on the properties of non-resident
beach property owners who had failed to clean up their own properties.
There
was no repeat of that silly plan this year. Instead, Charlestown isn’t marking
Earth Day at all.
And
why should it, given that the controlling CCA Party has gotten more open space
on the books, killed the Whalerock wind turbine project, driven
plenty of businesses out of town, shrunk the population and reduced the
number of Charlestown kids going to Chariho. This has been a good year for the
CCA “environmental” agenda, so maybe there’s really no point in marking Earth
Day.
But
I am a little surprised that they don’t hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner
over the front of Town Hall.
